0 Replies - 5251 Views - Last Post: 18 May 2013 - 10:57 AM

[link] Free Azure Cloud space and setting up a VM w/ Powershell

Posted 18 May 2013 - 10:57 AM

An interesting pair of articles about how to setup, get into, and move around in free Azure space, and the second is how to go about setting up VMs with powershell. If you haven't played with Azure this isn't a bad place to start!

The most exciting Azure feature to me  and the focus of this post  is the Windows Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) service.

This is something you can use today  this afternoon.

With Windows Azure and the addition of the Virtual Machines offering, there are tools, features and functions that enable you as an IT Pro, to have a readily-available lab without shelling out a lot of (or any) money for enterprise-class software and hardware. Of course there are other ways this functionality can be used but this post covers the idea of a simple lab.

Some of the great features I've discovered in working with Azure VMs:

Quickly create VMs from 'canned' OS images
Upload your own VM images
Customize a VM image and deploy it like a template
Attach additional virtual disks for data
Azure has PowerShell providers
There are a lot more